Amita Sehgal, Ph.D.

10-135 Smilow Center for Translational Research
Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Department of Neuroscience
Perelman School of Medicine at the
University of Pennsylvania
3400 Civic Center Boulevard Building 421Philadelphia, PA 19104

Description of Research Expertise

Research Interests
Molecular basis of behavior

Key words: circadian rhythms, sleep, genetics, metabolism, aging.

Description of Research
The laboratory is interested in the molecular basis of behavior. One major emphasis is on the mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms of behavior and physiology. Our accomplishments in this area have largely used a Drosophila model and include the isolation of the timeless clock gene, the finding that timeless (tim) functions in an autoregulatory loop that lies at the core of the endogenous clock, elucidating the mechanisms that synchronize the clock to light and discovering mechanisms that transmit signals from the clock and produce overt rest:activity rhythms. Ongoing work is addressing the mechanisms that generate a circadian period in the molecular clock, identifying the neural circuits that drive rhythms of rest:activity, and mapping the specific molecules/peptides that function in these circuits. We are also investigating circadian control of other physiological processes in Drosophila as well as mammals.

We also use Drosophila to investigate the homeostatic regulation of sleep. We and our collaborators developed a Drosophila model for sleep, which allows us to address longstanding questions about sleep regulation and function and has now been adopted worldwide. Using this model, we have conducted genetic screen to identify new sleep genes, dissected circuits that underlie sleep and also identified a function of sleep. We seek to understand the mechanisms that generate the need for sleep as well as those required to implement this need. We are also addressing the relevance of the circadian and sleep systems to other aspects of physiology, in particular to metabolism, and to healthy aging